A A Milne wrote propaganda

[Skipman]

Article in the Mail online

What would Pooh say?

Mike

[Ron Clifton]

Fascinating stuff, Mike!

It shows that the Army was quite good at finding square pegs to fit some of the square holes it needed to support the war effort. In WW2, the mystery writer Dennis Wheatley was recruited to write papers for the Joint Planning Staff.

Ron

[daggers]

Milne served as a subaltern in the R.Warwickshire Regt. I have a book of some postwar, light writings in which he muses on his war. Most had been published in Punch. Depending on his veracity he seems to have served as battalion signals officer, but there are hints of other, later duties which could be the subject of the Mail piece

There is a Wiki biog.

D

[Alan Tucker]

On November 7 1916 Lieutenant Colonel Collison was taken off the strength. On the same day A.A Milne did not get his ‘cushy wound’ but fell ill with trench fever. He described what happened in his autobiography…

“I had my men out on a little hill one morning and was walking, as usual, from station (he was a signalling officer) to station to see how the messages were coming through. It was a warm November day, so warm that each station seemed a mile rather than a few hundred yards from the next, and I wondered how I could drag my legs there. At lunch in the HQ mess I went to sleep; spent the afternoon and evening sleeping in front of the stove; and when I went to bed was given the usual couple of aspirins by the M.O. Next morning my temperature was 103. The M.O. went off to arrange for an ambulance to take me to the clearing station. By the time I was introduced to it again the thermometer was soaring to 105. Next day the battalion got the order to move; the attack was to begin. My sergeant came to say goodbye to me. I handed over my maps, commended the section to his care, wished him luck, and went to sleep again. He was lucky. He only lost a leg. Ten days later I was at Southampton. Some kind woman offered to wrote a telegram for me. It was to Daphne, saying that she would find me in hospital at Oxford. I woke up one afternoon and saw her at the end of the bed, crying” (1156)

Milne was in hospital for several weeks but was well enough on December 1 to attend a Punch dinner. After Christmas he rejoined the Warwicks on the Isle of Wight and rented a cottage at Sandown. Whilst there he wrote his first play – ‘The Two Wishes’. He then moved to Fort Southwick to be in charge of a signalling company at the signalling school for the Portsmouth garrison. He wrote a reflective war poem – see Appendix 83. He had still not recovered from his illness so went to the military hospital at Corsham and then to a convalescent hospital at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight for three weeks. Robert Graves was also there. A medical board in mid-1917 recommended that he was only fit for sedentary work. He returned briefly to Fort Southwick but by November 1917 was working on propaganda as an Intelligence Officer at the War Office.

[daggers]

The book I mentioned above is in poor condition but if anyone is interested enough to pay the postage, send me a pm with a postal address.

D

[jdoyle]

posted a link to this document re MI7b on an earlier GWF thread touching on Milne's colleague Lord Dunsany

http://www.psywar.org/psywar/reproductions/MI7b.pdf